Pakistan misses economic growth target

Islamabad:Pakistan missed its economic growth target for the current financial year by a wide margin mainly because of widespread dismal performance by the agriculture sector, a media report said on Saturday.

At a meeting on Friday of the national accounts committee comprising senior representatives from the four provinces and regions and technical experts, the performance of all economic sectors were added up that showed higher than targeted growth by the industrial sector. The services sector achieved its growth target of 5.7 percent.

But the most worrying aspect of the year was a 0.19 percent negative growth by agriculture as a whole against the target of 3.9 percent.

Cotton output led the free-fall in the agriculture sector, considered the backbone of the national economy, as it posted a negative growth of 27 percent. T

Important crops output fell by 7.18 percent against the target of 3.2 percent, while other crops fell by 6.2 percent against the target of 4.5 percent.

Wheat production grew by a meagre 0.61 percent to 25.47 million tonnes.

On an overall basis, industry grew by 6.8 percent against the target of 6.4 percent. Last year, industry had grown only by 3.6 percent.

The most important sector in industrial domain – large scale manufacturing (LSM) – also could not meet its growth target of 6 percent. It grew by 4.6 percent.